“Bi-coded” is the interpretive lens used in Binary Bashers to read a historical figure’s own writing, art, and relationships for documented attraction to more than one gender, and to translate that evidence for modern listeners. It describes a pattern in the historical record itself. It does not assign an identity label like bisexual, pansexual, fluid, or queer that the person never claimed.
What does “bi-coded” mean?
What Counts as Evidence?
- Personal writings (letters, journals, memoirs), interviews, self-identification
- Poetry or creative art expressing desire to more than one gender
- Documented intimate relationships across genders — including relational, oral, and community records where personal archives do not exist.
What Counts as Evidence?
| Bi-coded or Bisexual-coded | Queer-coded |
| Reads for attraction to more than one gender | Reads for gender, sexuality, or non-normativity broadly |
| Needs evidence: letters, journals, interviews, creative work or art, documented relationships, partner narrative, community and oral records | Can rest on style, performance, themes, symbolism, or presentation |
| Describes a pattern in the historical record | Describes a cultural or political reading |
| Never based on aesthetics alone | Does not require evidence of attraction |
What bi-coded is not
- Not a retroactive identity label. Calling a figure bi-coded doesn’t say they were bisexual, pansexual, or fluid , or that they would even use those words today. It says what their record and patterns show.
- Not a reading of style or aesthetics. Flamboyance, gender presentation, or a famous wardrobe can’t make someone bi-coded. Only evidence of attraction across genders can.
- Not shorthand for “not straight.” Bi-coded names attraction to more than one gender. It doesn’t stand in for gay, lesbian, or queer, and it doesn’t fold into them.
Example: Frida Kahlo (1907–1954)
Frida Kahlo is among the most recognized artists in the world, and her bisexuality usually gets a passing mention. Here is how the lens reads her.
Style, set aside. At 19 she posed for her father’s family portrait in a man’s three-piece suit. The suit shows nerve. On its own, it proves nothing.
Men, on the record. Her affair with the sculptor Isamu Noguchi ended when Diego Rivera showed up with a gun.
Women, on the record. She spoke openly with friends about her women lovers. Letters from the painter Jacqueline Lamba, sold unidentified by a dealer, tell Frida “I love you intensely.”
The record shows attraction beyond one gender. How Frida named it for herself stays hers.
Listen to the Frida Kahlo episode
Bi-coded is the interpretive lens used in Binary Bashers to read a historical figure’s own writing, art, and relationships for documented attraction to more than one gender, and to translate that evidence for listeners today. It describes a pattern in the record. It does not assign an identity label the person never claimed.
Queer-coded is broader: style, performance, non-normativity, with no evidence of attraction required. Bi-coded is narrower and needs evidence of desire or relationships across genders.
No. It means the surviving record shows attraction beyond one gender. How the person understood themselves, in their own language and era, stays their own.
For many of these figures the word didn’t exist, wasn’t safe to use, or wasn’t a category their culture used. Bi-coded names the evidence without overwriting the person.
Ross Victory, creator and host of Binary Bashers and treasurer of the LA Bi Task Force.